Steve Jackson Games is a company well known for its tabletop RPGs and card games. An innocent enough trade, then, so why in 1990 were its offices raided by the United States Secret Service? More
“It was a slow, toilsome process. And it was so meticulous that even veteran intelligence officials have marveled at bin Laden’s ability to maintain it for so long.”
How did the world’s most wanted terrorist managed to maintain email communication with his far-flung web of associates without being detected by US spooks, who were working awfully hard to sniff his headers out?
With an epic sneakernet. We know now, because after assassinating him, the US Navy SEALs departed bin Laden’s Abbottabad home with about 100 flash memory drives that officials say appear to archive emails between bin Laden and his al Qaeda network around the world. From a report published today by the Associated Press:
Holed up in his walled compound in northeast Pakistan with no phone or Internet capabilities, bin Laden would type a message on his computer without an Internet connection, then save it using a thumb-sized flash drive. He then passed the flash drive to a trusted courier, who would head for a distant Internet cafe.
At that location, the courier would plug the memory drive into a computer, copy bin Laden’s message into an email and send it. Reversing the process, the courier would copy any incoming email to the flash drive and return to the compound, where bin Laden would read his messages offline.
“How bin Laden emailed without being detected by US” (Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, reporting for AP)
Related reading: This Time article ventures analysis on what bin Laden’s family life was like. The short version: Big Love.
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How did Osama bin Laden email without the US discovering?
Would life make more sense if you suddenly realized that you’re actually inside Super Mario Bros.?
Also: turtles can climb fences? If snapping turtles can do this and develop opposable thumbs, we’re in trouble.
via Geekosystem | Photo: unknown
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Koopa in Real Life
Subsurface oceans may be a common features of the moons of our solar system’s gas giants. Evidence has piled up that there’s one on Titan, and data from Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede that indicate they too may have a watery layer underneath their crusts. Today’s issue of Science turns the focus to Jupiter’s moon Io, which has the most active volcanism of any body in the solar system. Instead of a watery ocean, however, evidence suggests that Io has a layer of partially molten rock over 50km thick.
Io's volcanic activity was discovered during the Voyager flyby of Jupiter, and further imaging has revealed a number of active volcanoes on the moon's surface—so many, that their total output is about 30 times the averaged activity of Earth's volcanoes. The power for this activity comes from the extreme gravitational pulls Io experiences. It's the closest to Jupiter of the four planet-sized moons that orbit the gas giant, and so it experiences intense strain as it's pulled between the planet and varying orbits of the outer moons.
To infer the moon’s interior structure, researchers used the same technique that helped strengthen the case for a subsurface ocean on Europa. Jupiter’s rotating magnetic field sweeps through the moons, and their internal properties will induce changes in that field. Molten rock has a different conductance than solid rock, and so it will induce different changes. Four passes of the Galileo orbiter provided data on the magnetic fields in the neighborhood of Io.
The authors built a model of Io’s interior, and changed parameters to find the best fit to the magnetic transformations that were observed. The model that seemed to work well had a partially molten asthenosphere, which is the upper-most layer of the mantle. The level of melt is, at a minimum, 20 percent, and the molten area is over 50km thick. The models indicate that the molten material must also be continuous, rather than composed of isolated pockets of molten rock, which wouldn’t produce the same magnetic signature.
The surface lava temperatures on Io indicate that the upper mantle must be over 1250°C, which is consistent with this level of melt. The authors also note that, at these temperatures, the mantle of Io will be too hot to effectively allow the core of the moon to get rid of heat, meaning that the deep interior of Io may be completely molten. All that, simply from the force of gravity twisting the interior.
Science, 2011. DOI: 10.1126/science.1201425
[Video Link] Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews raised over $15k in preproduction costs on Indiegogo for their movie about Dungeons and Dragon players, called Zero Charisma. The trailer is funny!
The Story:
Scott Weidemeier spends his time in exactly three ways: working a menial job at a local donut shop, caring for his abusive grandmother, and running The Greatest Dungeons & Dragons Game of All Time. Though overbearing and short-tempered, Scott is a hero to his fellow players–that is, until neo-nerd hipster Miles Butler joins the game, fueling Scott's rampant insecurity and alienating him from his own players. Can Scott overcome his contempt for the mainstreaming of nerdery, or will this clash of the subcultures come to a head?
Why We’re Doing It:
The video you can see above is a teaser trailer specifically made to launch our IndieGoGo campaign, that we think shows the rough story and feel of our vision. Though the topics of gaming and nerd culture are close to our hearts, our real passion for this story lies in the main character. Over the last year, we have taken great care to write someone who is neither your typical leading man, nor the archetypal nerd who exists only for laughs. And that’s the challenge we are excited to take up: evoking a range of emotions from the audience–from revulsion to delight to fear to sympathy–for the most unlikely of characters.
Zero Charisma: An indie comedy about the greatest Dungeon Master ever
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Trailer for Zero Charisma – a movie about D&D players
The Library of Congress has an extensive online collection of historic sound recordings going back over 100 years! Select from classical, ragtime, opera, gospel, and ethnic music, as well as spoken word recordings.
The National Jukebox debuts featuring more than 10,000 78rpm disc sides issued by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1900 and 1925.
Imagine your computer as a new Gramophone purchased for family and friends to enjoy in your home parlor. Audition popular recorded selections of the beginning of the 20th century years—band music, novelty tunes, humorous monologues, hits from the season’s new musical theater productions, the latest dance rhythms, and opera arias.
And, unlike a jukebox, you don’t have to insert quarters. Link -Thanks, Rich!
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National Jukebox
Ubuntu 11.04, codenamed Natty Narwhal, rose from the depths last week. The update brings a number of significant new features to the Linux-based operating system. It includes a much-improved refresh of the Unity shell and a number of other significant improvements throughout the application stack.
This is the first version of Ubuntu to ship with Unity on the desktop. Due to the far-reaching nature of the changes that accompany the transition to a new desktop shell, this review will focus almost entirely on Unity and how it impacts the Ubuntu user experience. We will also look at how Unity compares with GNOME 3.0 and the classic GNOME experience.
Read the comments on this post
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Feature: Riding the Narwhal: Ars reviews Unity in Ubuntu 11.04
It seems like the ongoing rivalry between Facebook and Google has taken a turn for the subversive. Last night, a spokesman for the social network confirmed to the Daily Beast that Facebook paid a top PR firm to spread anti-Google stories across the media and to encourage various outlets to examine allegations that the Mountain View company was violating user privacy. The PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, even offered to help blogger Chris Soghoian write a critical op-ed piece about Social Circle — a service that allows Gmail users to access information on so-called “secondary connections,” or friends of their friends. Social Circle, in fact, seems to have been at the epicenter of Facebook’s smear campaign. In a pitch to journalists, Burson described the tool in borderline apocalyptic terms:
“The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day-without their permission.”
Soghoian thought that Burson’s representatives were “making a mountain out of a molehill,” so he decided to prod them about which company they might be working for. When Burson refused to spill the beans, Soghoian went public and published all of the e-mails sent between him and the firm. USA Today picked up on the story, before concluding that any claims of a smear campaign were unfounded. The Daily Beast‘s Dan Lyons, however, apparently forced Facebook’s hand after confronting the company with “evidence” of its involvement. A Facebook spokesman said the social network hired Burson to do its Nixonian dirty work for two primary reasons: it genuinely believes that Google is violating consumer privacy and it also suspects that its rival “may be improperly using data they have scraped about Facebook users.” In other words, their actions were motivated by both “altruistic” and self-serving agendas, though we’d be willing to bet that the latter slightly outweighed the former. Google, meanwhile, has yet to comment on the story, saying that it still needs more time to wrap its head around everything — which might just be the most appropriate “no comment” we’ve ever heard.
Facebook admits hiring PR firm to smear Google originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 07:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Cisco’s Cius hopped on Big Red’s bandwagon a few months back, and now it's bringing its high-def corporate communications skills to AT&T. And not only will Ma Bell be selling the seven-inch slate, its AT&T Foundry division will make business-friendly apps for the device. Don't go bugging the bossman for one just yet, however, as the Cius won't be riding AT&T's waves of 4G HSPA+ until this fall. PR’s after the break.
Continue reading Cisco Cius on AT&T: crystal clear corporate communication coming this fall
Cisco Cius on AT&T: crystal clear corporate communication coming this fall originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 05:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Continue reading VIA QuadCore processor combines low-cost and low-power with ‘adaptive overclocking’
VIA QuadCore processor combines low-cost and low-power with ‘adaptive overclocking’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 May 2011 03:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.